K
Kate
Guest
Blind Marriages
I was at a loose end after being devastated from losing a man I was engaged to through cancer, he was 25 and me 20. Some friends took to me a party and I met a young man who seemed interesting and different. In short, I married him and lived to regret it because of his violent and abusive nature. He liked to hurt me - but without leaving any marks. Maybe stories for another day.
After a particularly violent episode five years into our marriage, at a party one night where my husband knocked me down in the street as we were leaving, I heard a woman’s voice say “Stop that, or I’ll call the police” The next thing I was being dragged upright by my hair and forced into his car. He drove off at high speed and screeched to a halt finally in the car park of the units where we lived. I was slumped in the passenger seat and he wrenched open the car door and forced me out and up the stairs to our unit. When inside our closed doors he proceeded to smack me around big time. My face felt numb from the blows and my jeans were torn. Suddenly there was a rapping on our door. He shoved me aside and opened the door to two men identifying themselves as plain clothed detectives. The woman who had seen me being forced into the car had rung the police and told them the car registration number. My husband immediately asked had they a search warrant and, in the face of my husband’s bravado, I made a life-and-death decision. I showed my battered face around the corner of the room and the detectives just said “Will you ask us in Mrs ….”. I nodded and they just brushed my husband aside and entered the unit. Somehow my husband distracted the police and he ended up trying to choke me in their presence! They subdued him and made him ring my parents – in those days police had very limited rights in “domestic situations”. I had suffered many situations already without police help!
The police got me out of the unit finally and were distressed by my husband’s behaviour. He was screaming from the balcony of our unit and then started prowling around the police car trying to get to me. One of the detectives asked me if he had a gun – I said no, not that I knew of, but the detective was shaking and called for the “paddy wagon” and uniformed police arrived and arrested my “better half”. My poor mum and dad finally came having been dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and took me to their home. My husband was taken away in the paddy wagon to face court. I ended up with two black eyes and a very swollen face and my nerves shot to pieces. He didn't suffer any court fines because I wouldn't agree to charge him. One of the detectives rang me later to beg me to charge my husband as he said "you don't know what I've seen". He'd seen many women with major physical injuries and thought my husband was definitely a dangerous character! Oh no, says little innocent me - he's sick! Yeah sick is right and from what I later heard he's still sick.
I never went back. My father came with me to my former family unit to pick up some possessions. We had a neighbour downstairs who had a disabled daughter. Her husband, a minister of religion, has suffered many attacks from liver cancer while I was living there and I and my husband (give him his due) used to go downstairs to help calm the daughter, who was in her twenties but had a mental age of about 12, when her father had his attacks. Finally the father died. When I went back to pick up my stuff after the big split with my husband this lady saw me on the stairs. She said to me severely “Don’t you ever come back”. I was mortified because I thought she’d heard the commotion when the police came to get me out. “Don’t ever come back”, she said. “My husband beat and kicked me when I was pregnant and my daughter is the result. No one would believe me because he was a minister.” Tears ran down my face as I looked into her eyes and I left that place, with her blessing.
No one deserves this kind of treatment. Thankfully I married again and have never had to face - words escape me - how do I describe it?
I was at a loose end after being devastated from losing a man I was engaged to through cancer, he was 25 and me 20. Some friends took to me a party and I met a young man who seemed interesting and different. In short, I married him and lived to regret it because of his violent and abusive nature. He liked to hurt me - but without leaving any marks. Maybe stories for another day.
After a particularly violent episode five years into our marriage, at a party one night where my husband knocked me down in the street as we were leaving, I heard a woman’s voice say “Stop that, or I’ll call the police” The next thing I was being dragged upright by my hair and forced into his car. He drove off at high speed and screeched to a halt finally in the car park of the units where we lived. I was slumped in the passenger seat and he wrenched open the car door and forced me out and up the stairs to our unit. When inside our closed doors he proceeded to smack me around big time. My face felt numb from the blows and my jeans were torn. Suddenly there was a rapping on our door. He shoved me aside and opened the door to two men identifying themselves as plain clothed detectives. The woman who had seen me being forced into the car had rung the police and told them the car registration number. My husband immediately asked had they a search warrant and, in the face of my husband’s bravado, I made a life-and-death decision. I showed my battered face around the corner of the room and the detectives just said “Will you ask us in Mrs ….”. I nodded and they just brushed my husband aside and entered the unit. Somehow my husband distracted the police and he ended up trying to choke me in their presence! They subdued him and made him ring my parents – in those days police had very limited rights in “domestic situations”. I had suffered many situations already without police help!
The police got me out of the unit finally and were distressed by my husband’s behaviour. He was screaming from the balcony of our unit and then started prowling around the police car trying to get to me. One of the detectives asked me if he had a gun – I said no, not that I knew of, but the detective was shaking and called for the “paddy wagon” and uniformed police arrived and arrested my “better half”. My poor mum and dad finally came having been dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and took me to their home. My husband was taken away in the paddy wagon to face court. I ended up with two black eyes and a very swollen face and my nerves shot to pieces. He didn't suffer any court fines because I wouldn't agree to charge him. One of the detectives rang me later to beg me to charge my husband as he said "you don't know what I've seen". He'd seen many women with major physical injuries and thought my husband was definitely a dangerous character! Oh no, says little innocent me - he's sick! Yeah sick is right and from what I later heard he's still sick.
I never went back. My father came with me to my former family unit to pick up some possessions. We had a neighbour downstairs who had a disabled daughter. Her husband, a minister of religion, has suffered many attacks from liver cancer while I was living there and I and my husband (give him his due) used to go downstairs to help calm the daughter, who was in her twenties but had a mental age of about 12, when her father had his attacks. Finally the father died. When I went back to pick up my stuff after the big split with my husband this lady saw me on the stairs. She said to me severely “Don’t you ever come back”. I was mortified because I thought she’d heard the commotion when the police came to get me out. “Don’t ever come back”, she said. “My husband beat and kicked me when I was pregnant and my daughter is the result. No one would believe me because he was a minister.” Tears ran down my face as I looked into her eyes and I left that place, with her blessing.
No one deserves this kind of treatment. Thankfully I married again and have never had to face - words escape me - how do I describe it?